


Wrathful

by SouthernMoonshine



Category: Havemercy Series - Jaida Jones & Danielle Bennett
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-03-24
Updated: 2015-03-24
Packaged: 2018-03-19 10:44:50
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,763
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3607218
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SouthernMoonshine/pseuds/SouthernMoonshine
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Before Rook, Amery had not known that love could be this wrathful, this violent, that it could break you open inside and take you apart.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Wrathful

**Author's Note:**

> Because platonic love can be as tempestuous and violent as any romance. Very early in Rook's career as an Airman.

Rook was drunk, lying back on the couch with his arms spread and his head lolled back so the arc of his throat showed sharp and pale. Amery wanted so desperately so snatch him up and hug him, to hide that vulnerability, but they were in the commons and Luvander was laughing in his ear, and it was his turn at darts. Amery threw badly and Rook looked up lazily and laughed at him. 

"Fuck you!" Amery spat, and the anger in his voice startled even him, but Rook was surging off the couch and Amery tore his arm from Luvander's grip and lunged to meet him. 

Fists on flesh, pain and impact, because this was the kind of love it was: until Rook, Amery had only known the soft patient warm snug kind of love, passed between his brother and himself. Their parents, estranged both from eachother and their children, had bestowed an uncomfortable sort of affection upon their offspring. Amery had learned more of love from his nanny than his mother, though he understood now that was not the common way of things. Before Rook, Amery had not known that love could be this wrathful, this violent, that it could break you open inside and take you apart. That it could claw your heart out with everything you could not say and all you did: yet it was no less and somehow no more the love that he had known before, curled around his little brother as they read to one another.

Rook blacked his eye and bit his forearm to the blood, spitting and snarling like an alley-cat, and there was nothing in the world that could ever make him stop fighting. It was all he knew and some days it seemed that was all there was to him, the will to fight and the ragged stubborn determination glittering hot in his pale blue eyes. 

Amery dislocated Rook's jaw before Adamo, roaring, broke them apart by grabbing their collars and half-choking them each like erring children. He sent them staggering out to the healer's bay, but Amery went instead to his room. He was not so much hurt, bruised and bleeding but drunk. He sat on his bed and took off his gloves and rolled up his sleeve, felt at the bite in the dim lamplight. The skin was only broken in a few places, the points of Rook's canines, and it was bruised and messy but it would heal. He'd clean it out...who was knocking on his door? 

Rook knocked once and slid in like a thief though a thin crack, one hand still cradling his jaw. Amery knew just by that he had not gone to the medic bay either. "Rook, you idiot, why in hell did you...ah fine, hold still," as Rook sat on the bed and canted a stubborn glare at him. Amery rose and stood before him, reaching for Rook's face with bare hands. With a shift and pop, the jaw was reduced, all in silence from Rook, who bore all great pain without words or sound like a dumb animal. 

Lesser hurts he was prone to whining or swearing about, but it was when he said nothing at all, breathing hissing softly in the back of his throat, Amery knew he was suffering most.

Amery stood a moment, Rook's jaw cradled in his hands. With a sigh, Rook closed his eyes and his shoulders sloped. Relaxed and quiet, and this too was the love between them. Amery still marvelled at it: only a few short months ago Rook had seemed something feral, half animal, lashing out at every opportunity, the slightest of provocations and sometimes at what seemed perfectly innocuous comments. None of them had really known how to take him and his constant profanity, his vulgarity, his ways of hoarding food and complete incomprehension of the necessities in life...like regular bathing. The transformation was astonishing, and Amery thought really only showed how adaptable and intelligent Rook really was. He latched on to new concepts and ideas and tore them piecemeal until he had an understanding of them, argued etiquette and ethics with Amery long into the afternoons, picked up politics with a casual cursory knowledge, and was rather sharp in his observations of people and their motives.

Amery stroked his thumbs down the hollows of Rook's cheeks, earning himself a limpid blue stare from beneath pale lashes. This was still so new, the quiet between them, and Amery was still finding his footing with it. It had begun in fists and blows and was unlikely to ever leave that point, he thought, but little breathless moments of peace had seeded and sprouted and grown.

Taking on Rook had been, at first, less of a choice and more of a necessity: between Ghislain, Amery, and Ace, who all had younger siblings, that second week of Rook's introduction into the life of an Airman had taken on far more structure. It had been - as was often the case with younger brothers - spitting hatred and fist fights and enormous sulks for weeks. Rook still had not forgiven Ace for some slight or another, but he tolerated Ghislain warily, and somehow, after Amery had sat on him for the better part of an hour and taken a brush to his hair, he'd begun to be more tractable when Amery intervened. This did not mean wholly manageable! Amery suspected Rook was too set in his wild ways to ever be respectable, or reasonable, or remotely civilized. But he listened more, now, before he flew into a temper, and he had stopped skulking down the halls and hiding in corners quite so much.

He was still prone to sitting on the floor even when there was a chair available, and even now he was barefoot on the flagstones. His feet were so calloused he didn't seem to mind the cold, though he was missing most of a toe on his left foot, a fact which appalled Amery every time he noticed it. Rook had explained to him the perils of frostbite, and how to keep your toes from falling off. Amery had heard before the dangers of staying out too long in the snow, but he'd never personally met anyone who'd suffered from it until he'd met Rook.

Rook had introduced Amery to a great many new things.

Smiling, Amery threaded his bare fingers back through Rook's hair. Blonde and thick, it was clean now and fell loose around Rook's ears and shoulders. Amery had needed to cut it to get the worst of the mats out, and it was still rather uneven. Rook didn't seem to care. He tipped his head into Amery's hands, eyes fluttering shut again. It seemed an unconscious reaction, and Amery started combing his fingers through Rook's hair, long slow strokes. After a few moments, Rook's shoulders relaxed again noticeably. A few strokes more, and with a sigh, he leaned forward and headbutted Amery in the sternum. Amery huffed and went still, hands held in the air.

"Gonna fuckin' fall asleep if you keep doin' that," Rook muttered to Amery's shirt.

"I..." Amery blinked, then laughed a very little. "Really?"

Rook leaned back, a slantways expression of caution on his face. Amery reached out gently with one hand and touched him on the arm, a careful sliding touch he'd learned from Rook himself as a wordless reassurance. Rook relaxed again. "I'm surprised. I'll remember that." And not do it when it was not warranted. Rook shrugged a little, and reached up to rub at his bruising jaw.

Amery reached out and measured the top of Rook's head to his breastbone, suddenly struck by the height. "I think you grew again."

"Huh, you think?" Rook tipped his head to eye Amery's hand, then unfolded from the bed and stood up, without giving Amery a chance to step back. Crowded into eachother's space, it was easy to see Rook's head now came to the top of Amery's collarbones, and his sleeves were too short again on his wrists. Amery chuckled, and Rook grinned. "I did. I might get tall as you in a bit."

"So you might." In the middle of growing, Rook was all bony edges and elbows and knees, but he was filling out almost as fast as he was growing. He'd started this year with hollowed cheeks and far too pale, and his bones showing too clearly. Now he was getting rounded edges and meat on his ribs and there was always a healthy flush to his cheeks in the cold, eyes bright. "I guess you are that age...how old are you, anyway?"

Only a bare foot away, Amery got a good look at Rook's face when he screwed it up thoughtfully. "I don't know."

"You don't know?" Amery repeated, incredulous.

"No. Don't know my birthday. Almost grown, though." Back to that wary expression, something stubborn in Rook's face. Amery could only guess why: it wasn't likely they could refuse Rook now for being too young, with Havemercy having chosen him as her rider. He certainly wasn't older than Amery himself, twenty-one and finished growing, but neither was he probably any younger than Raphael or Merritt, both seventeen and wild with their success as dragon riders.

"So you are. I wonder if you will get as tall as I am?"

Rook laughed, and slid to sit down on the bed again. "Fuckin' doubt it. You're one tall bastard." But he looked pleased by the idea.

"That I am." Amery chuckled, and sat down on the bed as well. He plucked his book up from where it waited on his pillow, fingers slipping through the pages to his place. "Nowhere near as tall as Compagnon, though. Or Ghislain."

"Fuck, is anyone?" Rook demanded, rolling his eyes. He shifted over as Amery toed off his boots and arranged his legs on the bed, leaning back against the wall. Amery set his finger on his place in the page, and waited, without looking. He didn't wait long: Rook was already shifting across the rustling mattress, to crowd his shoulder against Amery's and peer at the page. Amery smiled, and picked up where he'd left off, reading aloud patiently with his finger trailing along the page as he went. Rook could not read more than a very few words, but he could learn, and Amery was only too pleased to help him.

In the end, though, they only made it a few pages before falling asleep on one another in the dim lamplight.


End file.
